


The Ghosts We Once Knew

by deathmallow



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: AU, Brainwashing, District Two - Freeform, F/M, Gen, Lots of OCs - Freeform, Peacekeepers, That One With Haymitch's Brother, That One With Haymitch's Girl, That One With Haymitch's Mom, That One With a Bunch Of Previously Nameless Characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-19
Updated: 2012-04-19
Packaged: 2017-11-03 23:00:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/386948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathmallow/pseuds/deathmallow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Most of his early years was like catching a glimpse of something out of the corner of his vision and having it disappear when he turned to look directly at it.  The memories were odd, often all fuzzy and shiny-gold around the edges.  They told him that was from the head trauma too."</p><p>A very loose answer to the Girl on Fire Ficathon prompt: <i>Haymitch, who are you are is not what you did</i>.  Fairly AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ghosts We Once Knew

**Author's Note:**

  * For [azelmaroark](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=azelmaroark).



> Warnings for a bit of cursing, implications of prostitution in District Twelve, implied brainwashing/hijacking, a scene of non-explicit violence, and implied sexuality.

Haymitch had sent Ash ahead home a few hours ago with the rabbits from their snares, saying Ash ought to get back so their ma could get cooking them for dinner, but he’d stay back and get some of the blueberries for dessert. Ash took the rabbits, tucked them in his backpack, and just obeyed. Haymitch obviously wanted to be alone. He wanted to be alone a lot lately, and something about the intensely wary way he looked around the woods now and how his hand constantly strayed to the hilt of the knife on his belt made Ash almost afraid too.

His ma and Briar were talking about that too while they worked on the biscuits. “I just forgot,” Briar said. “I came up behind him, gave him a hug and he just panicked and threw me right down. The look on his _face_...when he did it, and then it was even worse when he saw what he did...” Her voice wavered, thick with tears.

“Are you afraid of him now?” Ma asked Briar with a tired sadness.

“I think he’s afraid of himself.” Now she really sounded about ready to cry. Ash had learned in eleven days to not move too quickly or too suddenly around his brother. Learned that because Haymitch now slept with a knife and woke up screaming at nightmares, it was better that he just sleep in his ma’s bed. The new house in Victor’s Village they’d formally move into tomorrow would have his own bedroom, with a blue bedspread he’d picked out. He’d have given it right back to have Haymitch hogging the covers again and calling him “runt” and teaching him to make a deadfall like he’d promised before the reaping. Wanted Haymitch to laugh and tousle his hair again as much as it used to annoy him before.

It was like when the hovercraft picked his brother up almost dead, and the doctors in the Capitol furiously worked to put him back together, they’d somehow left out all the pieces of him that mattered. He wanted to just find some way to say to him, _I don’t care what you did in that arena, it doesn’t matter, you’re alive, you’re my brother and I love you. And we need you and please, please, just come back._

Suddenly there was a knock on the door and Ma wiped her hands on her apron, leaving streaks of flour from the biscuits because they could afford good white flour now, and she answered it. It was Phineas Fog, the Head Peacekeeper, two of the other Peacekeepers with him in their spotless white uniforms.

It all happened in a blur. Before he even knew what was happening, Ma and Briar were down on their knees, the two Peacekeepers pressing pistols to the backs of their heads, and Fog had Ash in an iron grip against him, and he was saying something about defiance and treason and this wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real.

“What is this, Phineas?” Ma asked bitterly, turning her head just slightly to look at Fog. “You shoot us two now and wait for Haymitch to come on home and then shoot both my boys?”

“Your older boy’s not on the execution order. This is only the message to him. As for this one,” his hand tightened on Ash, “I put in a claim on him to get him off the list. That much I can do, and I did it.” Fog glanced at her and his voice almost softened. “Sorry, Nola. It’s not how I’d have it, but Haymitch crossed a line in the arena and we all saw it. I’m just carrying out my orders. And as for you, girl,” he nodded to Briar, “nothing I can do. It’s just your bad luck in choosing a boyfriend.”

“Don’t make him watch, damn you,” his ma said fiercely. Fog nodded and turned him away.

Ashford Abernathy was eleven years old when his mother and his brother’s girlfriend died right there in the kitchen of their house in the Seam. The shots were just muffled pops, but when he looked back the blood was sprayed a terrible red on the old boards that were scrubbed every Sunday to the point they were worn almost white.

They left the bodies there, and the body of a Seam boy Ash didn’t know, but he looked like he’d starved to death. Fog gave the order to torch the house as they left and Ash heard the roar of the flames as they headed for Peacekeeper’s Row. He thought he heard Haymitch screaming.

He tried to run away that first night from the room he’d been locked in, shinnying down a tree in the backyard. Fog told him, “I kept you alive, boy. Don’t be stupid enough to run out there and flaunt it and make me have to kill you.”

“Why the fuck do you even care if I’m dead?” he spat, using the curse word because he was sure it made him sound tougher. “You killed them!”

“Because I’m your father, boy. You and probably that brother of yours besides--maybe that’s why he’s such a terror in a knife fight. That’s nothing he could have got from that worthless drunk your mother married.” Fog snorted. “Although who knows, he sure as hell didn’t get a taste for defying lawful authority from me.” Ash stared at him, speechless. He’d heard the whispers for years, knew how his hair was mahogany brown in the sun rather than real Seam black, and knew that Haymitch always just readily punched anyone who dared to call him a bastard or a Peacekeeper brat. Fog had been nice sometimes too, he remembered with horror, giving him a faint smile or a piece of candy, but he’d never made the connection. Not until now, and suddenly he wanted to puke. 

It was unbearably _real_ , to have Fog be his father and to have watched his father just give the order to kill his mother, and it was something his mind couldn’t handle. He was trying to not start screaming. “You were supposed to get shot too, but the fact you’re mine and you’re so young, not even of reaping age yet, left a way out. I took it. I had to take it. I’m getting you out of here, and if you want to stay out of all the trouble your brother caused, you’ll behave. Keep your mouth shut, Ashford, and just do as you’re told, because I called in a lot of favors to keep you alive.”

He hated the casually possessive sound of those words. _You’re mine. You’re mine._ Like he was a toy or a dog that Fog owned somehow. So he kept fighting and yelling until Fog knocked him out with some kind of drug that apparently Peacekeepers used on unruly prisoners. Ash spent most of the next week that way until the train came in, the train that Fog smuggled him aboard and that took him towards District Two.

~~~~~~~~~~

Theodosius finished the paperwork for the disciplinary hearing and filed it, and then headed home for the evening. Myrina was waiting there for him at his house, a sparkle in her green eyes. The moment he closed the door behind him she was kissing him with enthusiasm.

“Rina, why is it seeing me heading up disciplinary hearings always makes you randy?”

“You’re just so damn hot, Theo,“ she grinned and tugged at his uniform buttons, “when you’re busy dispensing justice. Even on chicken thieves.” They sort of forgot about dinner after that.

She was like him, one of the children with a Peacekeeper parent. Some had a Peacekeeper mother but plenty were born of a district woman who had died or just surrendered her child to the hope of a better life, the ones who all carried the generic surname “Law” now. Growing up in the Peacehome wasn’t always easy, especially since it inevitably meant joining the Peacekeeper Corps at eighteen and serving out the expected twenty years. But as they all knew, it was a life of pride and service and honor. They would never need to worry about their place in the world. That was infinitely better than starving out in the districts like most of them would have otherwise, just more unwanted mouths to feed. It was a life their father or mother chose to give them by claiming them and bringing them to District Two. For the native Two orphans who lived there too, it gave them a place to go and somewhere to belong. It gave them all a sense of dignity and worth. They might not have parents to lean on daily but they would never be just a drain on Panem, unloved and alone and unwanted like the orphans of other districts. They had purpose.

What would he have had in District Twelve anyway? That was where they told him he came from originally, and when he saw people from Twelve on television, his grey eyes and the remnants of his accent seemed to fit that notion. He really couldn’t remember most of it. The accident that killed his mother and left him unconscious for days had left holes in his memory of those years. Most of his early years was like catching a glimpse of something out of the corner of his vision and having it disappear when he turned to look directly at it. The memories were odd, often all fuzzy and shiny-gold around the edges. They told him that was from the head trauma too.

His mother had loved him. He knew that. But in the flickers of memory, he remembered being hungry and afraid and cold. He had only been hungry and cold in the Peacehome when he misbehaved and was being punished, and he’d almost never been afraid. Even the harsh training to start to ready them for Peacekeeper life had been a blessing because it was something to keep his mind busy, and to his surprise, he’d excelled at it. History, law, district culture, combat, physical fitness--all of it. By the time he was eighteen and they assigned him to his first position in Five, he was proud to be someone who served and protected the people of Panem. Though he missed the crisp, clean air and majestic sight of the mountains when he got there, and the giant powerplant complexes of Five seemed too vast and impersonal after that tiny village where everybody knew each other.

Rina was originally from Four herself, and her sea-green eyes supported that. She’d been at the Peacehome from the time she was six months old and never knew anything different. They’d already had one good year together here in One since she transferred in to start her third five-year rotation. He was thirty-five now, on his last rotation, and he’d finish his service obligation in three years and be free then. But she was six years younger than him. Even after he got released from duty in a few years, they couldn’t marry until her own tour was finished. That would be nine years from now. He’d be forty-four by then. But he was confident it would be worth the wait, though. She was the one for him. She understood him. She prodded him out of his occasional mopey moods. She loved him.

He’d been in Nine, Seven, and Five on his three previous rotations, and while he’d enjoyed the districts, he understood why they moved Peacekeepers on every five years--it wouldn’t do for them to get too attached to people they had to help discipline. He guiltily knew he already had a hard time with that sometimes, that he came to like the locals and their odd but fascinating ways, and he’d accepted the admonishments of the Head about it when they were offered. He couldn’t seem to resist it.

That was why it was a good thing there had never been any chance they’d send him to Twelve on a rotation. None of the Peacekeepers now surnamed Law could ever go back to their birth district as a duty rotation. It would be far too awkward to try to enforce order and justice on people who could look at you and say that they recognized you, that you were So-and-So’s boy. To look out into the faces of the crowd and maybe see all those grey eyes that matched your own. 

They’d probably be too old for children by the time they married but that was OK. All he really needed was her, and early on when they were giddy in love, some of the other Peacekeepers here in Nine had told the two of them to make it a little less obvious. There was no rule--they were even generally encouraged to take sexual partners amongst each other first rather than turning to the locals--but falling in love could lead to distractions from duty, which was precisely why they were all forbidden to marry. So, in a nutshell, as long as they kept it quiet and did their jobs, nobody cared that they were engaged. The moment it became an issue, though, it would be a big one. They agreed they’d better never make it an issue and had been careful ever since. They talked some about what he’d do while he waited for her. Peacekeepers got a pension, but it wasn’t enough to live off by any means. He could take the exams to be a Head Peacekeeper somewhere and be able to settle down since they didn’t have to move on every five years, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to do that. Besides, they also discouraged Heads from marrying. “Problem is,” he told her glumly while they were relaxing together in his bedroom in the few hours before she’d have to go back to sleep at her own house, “this is really all we know how to do, right? I mean, it’s not like I can just go decide to be a potter or a farmer or something.” 

“You could become a coal miner,” she teased him.

“Oh, like you could become a fisherman? Bullshit.” He gave a snort of amusement eventually, her smirk melting the scowl off his own face. “Poet,” he gave in and he teased her back, rolling onto his back and folding her tightly in against his side with one arm.

“Painter.” Her fingers lightly caressed his shoulder. “You could apply to be a Gameskeeper,” she suggested. The senior Peacekeepers with their black berets lived in the Capitol and the position carried an insane amount of prestige with it. Every Peacekeeper out there pretty much wanted to become a Head or a Gameskeeper someday.

“I don’t know,” he said with a frown. Something about the Games always gave him the creeps in a way he couldn’t explain or rationalize. Even on Reaping Day, knowing full well Two’s tributes were already selected and had been training for it for years, he could never shake the feeling of unease. When he was real young, a twelve or a thirteen, he’d found himself looking back at the rows of older boys as if searching for someone there. “I’ve really never liked the Games. You know that.” He said it lowly, almost guiltily, because he was well aware it was a shortcoming in him. The 74th Games would start in two weeks. While he’d have to watch with everyone else, and he was sure the Two tributes would be fantastic and impressive as ever, it was one aspect of Two pride he’d never quite managed to be as enthusiastic about as he knew he ought.

“Probably that’s because you’re from Twelve originally?” She wasn’t kidding, saying it with total sympathy. “I mean, it’s likely there in your subconscious from growing up there for eleven years. Everybody knows Twelve never wins so they’ve really got no reason to look forward to the Games every year. Not the way we do in Two.”

“Well, we had one victor when I was little, though I don’t remember it. That’s gone with the rest of it.” Theodosius shrugged. “Though Haymitch hasn’t done much since. Maybe not all his fault. Look at what he has to work with in tributes every year.” From an outsider’s eye now he could see how scrawny and scared and generally pathetic the Twelve tributes really were. He honestly felt sorry for them more than anything.

“What was your name then?” she asked him softly. She’d never brought this up before. “If you remember. They say mine was Bronwen.” He wondered if she was longing for some piece of herself she’d never known. She’d never been to Four since she was a baby. He wondered if going back to Twelve would stir up more memories for him, but he knew for certain if he ever tried, his travel application would be denied. He had no essential reason to request inter-district travel like that. 

They’d all been renamed at the Peacehome, of course. All part of shedding their old lives and old loyalties that had no place now. He’d been disciplined a lot early on for insisting on using his old district name, but eventually he’d quit. Apparently that wasn’t uncommon in children that came in older, like he had. The headmasters were used to dealing with it until the older kids learned better. Ones like Rina definitely had it easier without bad habits to unlearn.

But this much he did remember, one little memory without gold edges of a boyish voice that called him “Ash” and laughter and a hand that roughly rumpled his hair. A friend? He didn’t know. “Ash,” he told her softly. “My name was Ash. I don’t know if that was it or if it was short for something, or what my last name was. Just...I was Ash. Once.” She must have heard some kind of melancholy in his voice because she held him tight. The name didn’t seem worth all that much to him without knowing what that meant, only a simple sound without much meaning. 

But some nights when he thought about that name he dreamed strange, disturbing dreams. Dreams of fire and screams and the sight of blood on an almost-white floor and being afraid and wanting desperately to tell someone that they were loved no matter what they had done and maybe if he’d just said it then everything would somehow have turned out OK. When he dreamed those dreams, all his pretense of it being meaningless drained away, and as he reached out for ghosts that once had been his and were now beyond his grasp, he wished desperately that he could remember Ash and understand what it all meant.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the lovely azelmaroark for humoring me for how many left turns this fic took off her original prompt. 
> 
> Original prompt is here: http://kolms.livejournal.com/18020.html?thread=1566308#t1566308


End file.
